Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates
and former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan were
among supporters of ex-Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director Rajat
Gupta who urged mercy at his sentencing next week for his part
in the biggest hedge fund insider trading scheme in U.S. history.

Gupta is to be sentenced Oct. 24 for leaking stock tips to
Galleon Group LLC co-founder Raj Rajaratnam, who masterminded
the conspiracy. In letters to U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in
Manhattan, Gates, Annan and at least 200 others wrote on behalf
of Gupta, who faces as many as 20 years in prison on the most
serious of the four counts of which he was convicted.

“I urge you to recognize Rajat for the good that he has
done in this world, to give him the credit that he deserves for
helping others, and to take into account his effort to improve
the lives of millions of people,” Annan said of Gupta’s work to
reform the UN’s management. Gates wrote “I wanted to add my
voice to those of other friends and colleagues of Rajat Gupta
who are writing to you in order to round out Rajat’s profile,”
noting his service as chairman of an organization fighting AIDS,
tuberculosis and malaria.

Gupta is the most prominent of the 69 people convicted
since a nationwide insider trading crackdown by U.S. prosecutors
and the FBI began in 2009. Besides his tenure at New York-based
Goldman Sachs, Gupta served as managing partner of McKinsey & Co.
from 1994 to 2003 and on the boards of Procter & Gamble Co., the
Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Found Guilty

Gupta, 63, was found guilty in June of three counts of
securities fraud and one count of conspiracy. Securities fraud
carries a maximum prison term of 20 years, though Gupta will
probably be sentenced to fewer years under federal guidelines.

After a four-week trial, a federal jury in Manhattan said
Gupta tipped Rajaratnam, 55, about dealings at New York-based
Goldman Sachs, including information about a $5 billion
investment by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. on Sept.
23, 2008, and a tip on a quarterly loss. Rajaratnam is serving
11 years in prison for trading on tips from Gupta and others.

Writers of the letters on Gupta’s behalf, made public Oct.
12, included Gupta’s family and former associates in the worlds
of academia, business and charity.

Among them were Kushal Pal Singh, the billionaire chairman
of DLF Ltd., India’s largest developer; Leonard Lauder, the
chairman emeritus of Estee Lauder Cos.; and Mukesh Ambani,
India’s richest man and the chairman of Mumbai-based Reliance
Industries Ltd., the world’s largest refining complex.

‘The Prison Fence’

Singh credited the Kolkata-born Gupta with bringing
Microsoft’s Gates to India and with helping DLF create an urban
development initiative there. Because of the prosecution,
Gupta’s charitable works in India have been at a “standstill,”
he said.

“We as a society need more visionaries like Rajat Gupta,”
Singh wrote. “Rajat Gupta is no threat to anyone inside or
outside the prison fence.”

Other writers included Ajit Jain, Berkshire’s reinsurance
chief; Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation;
Amartya Sen, a Harvard University professor; and author Deepak
Chopra.

Chopra called Gupta “compassionate, caring, selfless and
dedicated” and cited his work helping found the Indian School
of Business in Hyderabad.

‘Leverage Information’

Jain, who testified at the trial as a defense witness,
talked about his long friendship with Gupta and family. Jain
said Gupta has already “been disgraced personally and
professionally.”

Jain said Gupta “customarily chided me during our social
meetings to become more active in philanthropic causes” and
said he never saw Gupta abuse “his many positions of trust for
personal gain.”

“On no occasion of our meetings did Rajat ever seek to
inappropriately obtain or leverage information or opportunity by
speaking with me, and I would have considered even a mild effort
in that regard to be completely foreign to his character,” Jain
wrote.

Gupta’s wife, Anita, wrote an account of meeting her
husband in 1968 at the Indian Institute of Technology, where she
was the only girl in a class of 250 and he was “a big man on
campus.”

‘Devastating’ Case

“I have never forgotten his kindness to the very shy,
quiet, small-town girl who felt so out of place,” she said.

She told the judge the case has been “devastating” for
her family. “Never in my wildest dreams” did she imagine she
would be “separated from my husband in this way.”

She recounted how Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer
Lloyd Blankfein “loudly gave Rajat an ultimatum that he had to
choose between Goldman and KKR,” citing a 2008 offer he
received to join KKR & Co. as an adviser. Gupta, who joined
Goldman Sachs’s board in 2006, opted for KKR, then agreed to a
request by Goldman Sachs that he return when the financial
crisis hit, she said.

“I tried very hard to counsel Rajat against it because I
felt he had been treated unfairly by Goldman Sachs,” she wrote.
“He felt he owed Goldman Sachs his loyalty.”